Decreasing dietary diversity following habitat loss: the case of the thin-spined porcupine in the Atlantic forest
- PDF / 1,063,050 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 36 Downloads / 165 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Decreasing dietary diversity following habitat loss: the case of the thin‑spined porcupine in the Atlantic forest Gastón Andrés Fernandez Giné1 · Kena Ferrari Moreira da Silva1 · Deborah Faria1 Received: 9 February 2020 / Accepted: 30 June 2020 © Deutsche Gesellschaft für Säugetierkunde 2020
Abstract The thin-spined porcupine (Chaetomys subspinosus Olfers, 1818) is an endemic and threatened rodent from the Atlantic Forest biological hotspot. Previous studies have demonstrated it follows a strictly leaf-based diet, limited to a few tree species, although such information is derived from few individuals (n = 7) resident in small forest fragments. We aimed to evaluate whether such dietary specialization persists when animals inhabit larger forest fragments. For this, we assessed the diet composition of 19 radiotracked individuals inhabiting small ( 500 ha; n = 9) forest fragments in southern Bahia state. We compared the composition and diversity of the diet in terms of tree parts and species consumed in these contrasting fragment size environments. Secondly, we aimed to evaluate the influence of leaf chemical composition on the consumption of plant species. Our findings show that the thin-spined porcupine is a strict folivore, with individuals responding to the reduction in forest size by reducing the diversity of plant species consumed, but not by feeding on new plant parts. Although the diet was richer in larger forest fragments, certain tree species were the most consumed in both fragment-size categories and the unique item consumed were leaves. Fiber influenced positively the leaf consumption of the plant species, while there was no effect of other chemical characteristics. The influence of the habitat size reduction on food diversity may be a risk factor for the species. Keywords Threatened species · Arboreal folivore mammal · Diet composition · Feeding ecology · Food selection · Plant secondary metabolites · Forest fragments
Introduction An animal’s diet composition is based on a complex balance between metabolic requirements, food availability, and costs of acquisition, digestion and detoxification (Ganzhorn et al. 2017; Jensen et al. 2015). Information regarding the dietary composition of a threatened species under different wild Handling editor: Sabine Begall. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s42991-020-00051-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Gastón Andrés Fernandez Giné [email protected] 1
Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Programa de Pós‑Graduação em Ecologia e Conservação da Biodiversidade, Laboratório de Ecologia Aplicada à Conservação, Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (UESC), Rodovia Jorge Amado, Km 16, Salobrinho, Ilhéus, Bahia 45650‑000, Brazil
conditions is key for supporting in situ and ex situ conservation actions, and a powerful means to identify behavioral changes in the face of anthropic disturbances. In particular, the massive loss and the increasing
Data Loading...
